


The Winter Spirit

by meteor-sword (vaenire)



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Blue Spirit but not the cool vigilante justice blue spirit, Character Death, Child Abuse, Dissociation, Gen, Sort Of, Winter Soldier AU, but not really
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:27:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25399153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaenire/pseuds/meteor-sword
Summary: Zuko dies. Azula runs.But when Ozai sends a masked assassin after her, she cannot run from family any longer.//(Winter Soldier AU)
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 96





	The Winter Spirit

**Author's Note:**

> Child abuse warning for Ozai's treatment of Zuko and Azula.  
> Zuko 'dies' in the Agni Kai, implying Ozai killed him... 
> 
> Violence is somewhat escalated from canon-typical.

When Zuko wouldn’t rise, refusing to do the honorable thing and meet their father’s challenge, Azula found herself rather pleased. Zuko would not live this down any time soon; Zuko in all his foolishness had just cemented Azula’s place as the favorite child for the foreseeable future. 

Ozai created a flame in his open hand, letting it flow over his fingers as his other hand gripped Zuko’s hair, bringing the burning hand to her brother’s face. 

Zuko cried out, and Azula clasped her hand into a fist: the sound of victory. 

But Ozai didn’t stop when Zuko ran out of breath in his lungs to scream. Even when he reached out blindly, trying to grasp at Ozai’s arms, begging silently until he couldn’t anymore. 

Zuko dropped to the floor limply to the floor, and Azula found her vindictive smile frozen on her face, the muscles of her face not listening. 

She heard Zhao huffed a laugh, all eyes on Zuko’s pitiful form. 

Royal medics attended all duels involving a member of the Royal Family, but they hesitated now, unsure of the Fire Lord’s wishes. Long moments passed as Ozai strolled down the platform, a servant retrieving his cape and replacing it on his shoulders-- but Azula couldn’t tear her eyes away from her brother, lying still on the mat. 

Something squeezed her chest and wrung acid out of her heart, filling her stomach to the brim as the medics approached him. A twisted smile still sat on her face as one medic looked to another, eyes wide. The crowd began to disperse as the Fire Lord had exited the chamber, no longer obligated to watch as a stretcher was brought onto the stage. 

\--

Azula had seen fire eat flesh and bone before. Funerals were not foreign to her, even at eleven years old. She was a princess in war time-- she had attended her grandfather’s funeral, catching sight of his shrivelled body becoming a shell in the flame. 

She had seen plenty of veiled cremations, as well. Ranking generals whose bodies were repatriated for a dignified cremation in the Palace City were often placed under a sheet for the procession, the wretched reality of their death too much for the public to see. 

Zuko’s veil was pure white with gold trim. She stood beside her father as the sages read ceremonial scripts, and then set the pyre ablaze, but she didn’t feel like she stood there. Her eyes felt stuffed with cotton, and her limbs too; she stood limp and watched the fire like a ragdoll. 

Veils did little to hide a body once the pyre was lit. It was gone in seconds, fire eating it like the acid ate up Azula’s cotton insides at seeing the silhouette of her brother’s face. She felt the world lurch as she recognized signs of caving in his face from a previous flame. While fire was efficient, it wasn’t fast enough to leave the outline of scarring deep in the tissue she could already see. 

If she could see this from her eyes, rather than wherever she was floating above witnessing it, she might have felt nauseous. 

As it were, she recoiled just a half inch from the heat, little enough not to be noticed. Ragdolls shouldn’t stand too close to open flames. 

\--

She expected the acidic feeling inside to dissipate eventually. She’d felt similar feelings before, but they faded eventually with some sleeping and firebending form repetition. 

She snuck into Zuko’s sleeping chambers that night and found his bed made. She sat on the step his bed was sat on and tried to will away the way the bottom of her stomach felt like it was dropping out. 

It was Zuko’s fault, what happened that day. 

She moved in the shadows back to her own room, and didn’t let herself think any more of it. 

\--

That eating sensation deep in her gut became the new normal. 

When her friends visited the palace for their weekly social time, neither Mai nor Ty Lee asked about Zuko. No, but they treaded light and quiet around the pond, casting sidelong glances to each other when they thought Azula wouldn’t see. 

They didn’t understand. Zuko earned his fate. 

\--

The acid churned in her stomach, and it made her shiver at night, flashes of her brother’s face consumed by flame flashing before her eyes. Fire devoured indiscriminately: between flesh and cloth and bone, young or old, royalty or peasantry, it greedily accepted all. 

She formed it into her motivation: she wasn’t Zuko, she would make sure she did nothing to invite Zuko’s fate. 

\--

At her twelfth year banquet, she sat properly still, not listening to the speeches given by each of the Fire Sages. She had heard them before, and remembered them fine; they were not as moving to a modern audience than they would have been several centuries ago, when these scripts were written. 

She stared at her Uncle at another table, who stared at his plate. She heard he was truly brilliant once. Before he lost his son and his siege and his father and throne in one fell swoop. Now he took a sip of tea, eyes not leaving his plate.

When Zuko turned twelve, their Uncle presented him with a gift: she couldn’t remember what it was, but it was wooden and she burned it that night. 

_ ‘I’m telling Uncle!’  _ he’d said.

_ ‘What’s he going to do about it?” _ she’d retorted.

Uncle looked up at her now as the fifth Sage finished his monologue, and Azula stared back at him blankly. 

\--

She performed her newest form for her father, faltering on the final pose and earning a fire whip at her unsure ankle. 

She retired to her room, humiliated, allowing a servant to rub salve onto the pinkened skin. 

For the first time in years, she let herself acknowledge the ball of tar and acid and thorns in the pit of her stomach-- it turned to irritating powder, the smell of sulfur filling her nostrils with every breath. 

\--

A scroll was left on her bedside table when she woke one day, when her ankle had already healed. 

It read, in simple calligraphy, an archive call number and the phrase “to look upon your ancestor’s face.” 

She waited until the next night, after the guards had seen her retire for the night. An hour later, she returned to her door and snapped at the two guards flanking her chamber door, dismissing them sharply for disturbing her sleep. 

She let another hour pass, sitting in her bed in the dark and trying to deduce who would have penned the note to her. Should she investigate at all? 

She had already committed when she sent her guards away, though, and Azula did not back down. Quietly, toeing inside the long shadows of the palace, she made her way swiftly through the halls to the archives, deftly avoiding guards and anyone else who would be wandering the palace halls at night. 

Igniting a small blue flame in her palm as she snuck into the dark archives hall, she recalled the call number that she had memorized. It was difficult to track down, but she found the short corridor hidden around a sharp corner before long. It was lined with ancient wooden drawer chests, about a foot taller than Azula, all extravagantly decorated with red lacquer and gold details of dragons and lotuses and flames. 

There were nearly a dozen such chests, disappearing into the dark recesses where her flame didn’t reach. 

Along the top border of each drawer are a string of characters, and as she walks down the line of them she realizes they thread together, each drawer providing a new line of a poem. She started reading them halfway down the corridor.

_...Glory to the forefathers _

_ Lighting the way _

_ Illuminating the path _

_ Noble and honorable _

_ Is he who respects the forefathers _

_ To look upon the face of your ancestors _

She stopped in her tracks and stared at the carefully painted characters. This was the last chest in the row. 

Now what? She looked at its drawers: they were around five inches tall each, and she could see the handles that were oiled by the repeated touch of hands, stained black. Only three of the drawers on this chest had such discoloration, and she reached slowly for the bottommost drawer with the stains. 

It creaked and squeaked when she pulled it open, and she stared at its contents for a long moment before it dawned upon her what she saw. 

There were three masks set gently on plush velvet, all made of tempered brass; two empty spaces to the right waited to be filled. The three masks’ eyes were shut as if asleep, but Azula knew better: these were death masks. 

The leftmost mask was of a man with a shaven face and wide, square jaw. Cousin Lu Ten. 

The next mask, center left, was a miserable looking old man, wrinkled and eyes seeming pressed shut. Grandfather--  _ Fire Lord _ \-- Azulon. 

The center mask, Azula dare not describe even in her head. Half of the face seemed to be swollen and ridged, the left eye socket and nostril caved in upon itself. She didn’t need the confirmation, but she carefully picked up the mask anyway, turning it over to see the characters of her brother’s name etched into it. 

It was expected, but it still made the acid surge through her insides, turning to powder in her veins, extinguishing the flame in her palm and making her vision swim. There were no windows in this corridor, and so she sunk to her knees in the dark, hands gripping the mask still. It was worse this way, touch being the only sense left as she ran her fingertips over the mask. 

_ Zuko deserved it, Zuko deserved it, Zuko earned this, _ she repeated to herself her familiar mantra. She felt her belief wavering, a dangerous realization. 

Suddenly there was light from the end of the corridor she had come from, and she scrambled to move, to hide possibly, but there was nowhere to go and it was already too late. She slid the mask into her large sleep robe sleeve. 

It was a flame, deep orange and approaching her steadily. She blinked against it, heart hammering in her rib cage, until the short man came into focus. 

“Uncle?” 

Uncle Iroh let the flame burn cooler, a deeper red, and kneeled in front of Azula beside the chest. Gently, he reached for her sleeve and freed the mask with his flameless hand. He rubbed a thumb over the mask’s cheek. 

“I can explain,” she told him, straightening her back. 

“There is no need, Princess.” He sounded sad, and he reached to open the drawer that she had slammed shut in her panic. Gently, he replaced the mask in the empty space beside where she had taken it from, sparing a moment to brush his hand over the mask of Lu Ten before taking in hand the contents that Azula had overlooked beneath her brother’s mask. A key and a knife. He held them out to her. 

“Why?” she asked at last-- and she didn’t know if she was asking why he was here, why he sent that scroll, why he was giving her these. 

He was silent until she took the items from him, sleeping them into her sleeve where they would be discrete. 

“Do you know what happened to your Grandfather?” 

“He died,” she said without hesitation, voice raising. He tensed at her volume, waiting to listen to it reverberate over the stone floors. 

“How did he die, niece?” 

Azula shrugged callously. “He was old.” 

He pursed his lips, and she waited to be scolded. “He was, but he was healthy. Consider him, Princess Azula,” he said, waving a baggy sleeve at the closed drawer. 

She opened her mouth to rebuke him, but he was already turning and walking away, bringing his light with him. He turned a corner, and she was left in the dark.

She knew what he meant, what he was implying. She could barely feel her feet as she walked back to her room. Only when she sat on her bed did she unsheath the knife and read the engraving on the blade.  _ “Never give up without a fight _ . _ ” _ It made the acidic chalk in her veins freeze, threatening to crumble if she moved too fast. 

She had envied the gift when it arrived from their uncle, back when he was still sieging Ba Sing Se. It was not envy she felt now. 

Zuko was such an idiot. He would play fight with his toys all day, but when it really mattered he refused. A small, involuntary smile spread on her face when she remembered finding him playing by himself again, acting out some scene from a play he’d seen. As quick as it came, it disappeared as she remembered what she had seen in the archives: his face nearly unrecognizable, eyes closed in death. 

Did Zuko really deserve that? 

\-- 

She was confounded by her uncle’s choice to show Azula what he did, and to give her what he gave her. What if she had told her father? Was he not afraid of the consequences for subliminally suggesting she leave the palace? 

She wasn’t going to admit it to her Uncle-- she didn’t care to confide in the distant old man, nor did she trust him either-- but she knew Azulon did not die of natural causes. She knew her father had some hand in it, and in her Mother’s disappearance; she just didn’t think about it. It was natural for the strong to usurp the weak. Same for her Uncle, and Mother, and Zuko. 

And Azula, she supposed. She tried to find a logical flaw-- her Father wouldn’t treat her the same as Zuko, would he? 

She ended up testing the key on Zuko’s old chambers, which had been locked shortly after the funeral. It unlocked easily, but she was afraid to step inside-- she could see from the doorway that it was unchanged. 

She tried it on her Mother’s chamber, and it unlocked easily. 

Uncle had gotten her a skeleton key. 

A thought crested on the horizon as she considered what Uncle had intended by giving her this. He did not have insurance from repercussion if he were found out-- even chalking it up to a simple gift, perhaps a reasonable explanation, would not appease his brother if Ozai found an issue with it. 

There was no explaining things to Ozai: Azula had learned that lesson over and over.The moment his favor faded, it was gone until it was earned again. She knew how to earn it, how to play the cards and say the right things-- that’s what Zuko couldn’t learn. 

But she had known this already. Zuko tripped in saying and doing the right things, and Azula fared far better than him. Could she continue to navigate the maze forever? And when she succeeded and grew older, could she succeed in staying comfortable under the threshold of what Ozai considered a threat? 

Ozai, who would turn on his father, his brother, his wife and his own son? Would she be able to convince him that she was of use yet posed no threat? Azula knew her own potential. There was no insurance in the world to prevent the day from coming that Ozai would decide she was too dangerous to keep around. 

She needed-- her thoughts hiccuped before she could finish them, cotton filling her throat. 

(She needed out). 

\--

There was one difference between her and Zuko, and the key difference in their Father’s affection between them (maybe affection was too strong of a word): Azula knew how to study, teach herself new skills and excel quickly. She found scrolls depicting close combat melee moves that a fighter with a dagger could employ, and she practiced them in her chambers after sunset each night. 

Perhaps Ozai could use and discard others in the family like puppets, dolls with strings on every limb, but Azula was different. Azula could play the game too, and she could play it better. She was a puppet to her Father for the moment, but she could teach herself to swing upward. 

Each month, she had an audience with her Father, accompanied by her firebending tutor, to show off to him her quick progress. Tonight was that day, and she would not do well. 

Azula spared herself a thought of self-doubt-- would it not be convincing if she flubbed her demonstration? Would Ozai not see through it? 

He didn’t. He stood at the end of her pitiful performance, too disgusted to lash out at her.

“Out,” he ordered, and Azula turned on her heel and left quickly before he could change his mind. She didn’t spare even a moment to feel for her tutor, who was surely about to be harangued for teaching her so poorly. 

Ozai’s schedule was full after this demonstration, his few spare moments now filled with punishing the fool teacher. 

It was her chance. She would be expected to isolate herself in shame, and no one would come to her room until dinner, perhaps. She stuffed her pillows under her blankets, hoping to buy herself a little more time 

She had collected extra clothes in the previous days, as well as the hard bread rationed out for servants, and a water skein. She hid them in the rafters, along with what her Uncle had given her, all shoved into a rucksack. 

She changed quickly into nondescript robes, poorer quality than her usual garb, and locked her room door. 

As far as any guard should know, she was sulking about failing in front of her Father. In truth, she was psyching herself up and sitting in wait for her chance to escape in the night. She tucked her back under the side of her bed where it would not be seen from the doorway, just in case. 

Someone knocked on her door two hours later, calling her to dinner. She called back a vehement refusal, and waited for a further response-- none came, and she grabbed her bag. 

Her fingers were numb yet nimble as she pulled herself onto the roof from her balcony. 

She stayed low, jumping carefully between rooftops in the royal compound, eyes on guards and waiting for the moment they turned corners or swung around to go back up their assigned hallway. 

She knew that there was a curfew in the inner Palace City, increased security customary since the beginning of the war. It made her escape easier and more difficult simultaneously: while there would be no civilians moving unpredictably through the streets, the guards in this region of the city were some of the fiercest still stationed on Fire Nation soil. 

But they were watching for those who wanted to get  _ into  _ the palace, not  _ out _ . 

For the high walls and grandeur of the Inner Wall, it was a small area and quickly traversed by rooftop. 

Azula watched the sunrise on her home city from high on the volcanic wall before turning away. She saw a hamlet from this high viewpoint, and she set off in its direction. 

\--

She travelled by foot for the most part. Occasionally a kind peasant family would offer her a lift in the back of their Dragon moose drawn carriage, and she would play the stoic traveller, not humoring questions as to why such a young girl was traveling alone. She glared at everyone as she passed through marketplaces, carefully aware of her surroundings wherever she went. 

There was no plan yet: all she knew was that at least here, she was no longer a puppet at the whim of her Father: the dolly learned to cut the strings. She would return home one day and dethrone him, one way or another. Then she would feel safe again. 

She had never been one to trust anyone, never needed to trust anyone. She took care of herself. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t play on the naive kindness of families who lived in the peripheral of the country, who would see a lone traveller and offer food and lodging. Near the northeast coast, one such family insisted on giving her dinner. She was a day’s walk from the large port town of Sung Lai, where she hoped to pawn some jewelry she’d sewn into her bag. The wet season was coming and she needed to replace her cloak. 

The wife brought out a platter, some roasted hunk of meat that had been filled with hot stones and vegetables-- Azula had to conceal her look of disgust at the dish, feigning gratefulness. She wasn’t grateful, not really, because food  _ should _ be provided for the  _ Princess _ . 

She didn’t notice the Fire Lord portrait that hung in an enclave in the plain brick wall until the wife tutted at her for reaching for the food before turning to light a candle in said enclave. It was a crude recreation of a royal portrait of Ozai, clearly distributed by a local with access to some paint, the old canvas probably repurposed from a portrait of Azulon or a mythical figure from Fire Nation past. 

This woman, in her early thirties perhaps, and her husband and their three children, bowed their heads toward the enclave for a moment before they turned to the platter of food. 

Azula sat in stunned silence for a long moment before she thought to conceal her reaction-- too late, the man of the house spotted her widened eyes. 

“I don’t know where you’re from,” he said, and not unkindly, “but this region grows over two thirds of the food for our troops.” He spoke with pride, and his teenage son puffed his son out, too. She knew they were farmers when she met them in the nearby village’s market square, based on their dirty clothes and callused hands. “We’re proud of that.” 

The woman scooped brown food onto Azula’s plate when she didn’t move to do so herself. “That man has given so much for our nation,” she said wistfully, almost pained. 

“Oh?” was all Azula was able to say. 

“You’ve never heard? If I were him, I would probably give up on helping the other nations; but he’s stronger than any of  _ us _ .” she said, finally cutting some meat for her own plate. “His own wife turned against the Fire Nation, and then Earth Kingdom resistance members took his only son,” she said, aghast at Azula for not ‘knowing’ this. “And now they’ve gone after his daughter-- his  _ beloved heir _ .” 

“I didn’t hear about the Princess,” Azula said, her voice perfectly even. “You are right, he is a strong leader,” she said appeasingly. 

The woman smiled, and the dinner progressed without much expected of Azula. The siblings kept conversation amongst themselves, a foreign concept in itself to Azula. She never expected to feel so much culture shock in her own nation. Perhaps, she thought, it wasn’t the culture. 

One thing was for certain though: if peasantry this far from Caldera City knew of Azula’s disappearance-- the details of it notwithstanding-- she needed more space. She needed to get away from the mainland. 

\--

The husband gave her some advice when she excused herself, thanking the woman for the food and sparing not one more glance for any of the children. He said, if she were looking to run from trouble, the colonies were always looking for more Fire Nation bodies to ferry across to the Earth Kingdom. Plenty of job opportunities there, he heard, for anyone with a smart head on their shoulders and a will to work. 

He insisted she take some of the hard tack from their store of it, saying he’d heard that the ferries and the port towns upcharged exorbitantly for anyone who looked to be travelling through. 

She thanked him once more and put her rucksack back over her shoulder. If word had spread that she’d been kidnapped, then there must be a bounty for her safe return, which meant she would have to keep an eye over her shoulder. 

\--

Sung Lai was a miserable place, just as she had imagined from the way the man described it: it sat on a musky bay, low clouds capping in the smog from coal ships, trapped under a low mountain range that rose dramatically from the sea. Everything was damp: Azula’s brow, and her clothes, and the muck she walked through on the unpaved roads. 

The ferries were no better: people were piled onto them like chattel, the few seats spared mostly for the elderly and the one pregnant woman, all others left to stand as the boat rocked toward the opposite shore. The boat was old, and the captain kept it slow to conserve fuel and maximize profit, Azula speculated. 

The colonies, she discovered, were even worse. The southern shore of the Earth Kingdom where Fire Nation colonies had been established had miserably muggy autumns, but the colonialists refusal to adopt local architecture-- choosing instead to impose Fire Nation aesthetic-- punished local and colonialist citizens alike. 

Azula was running out of her store of resources. Fewer of the peasantry here were kind enough to offer her dinner or lodging, and real shelter was more imperative than ever as the locals shuffled through muttering about the coming monsoon season. 

She needed a job, though she shuddered at the thought. 

What jobs were available for a newly turned thirteen year old, that she had the skillset for, that someone would give to her without knowing her true identity? 

The first gambling room owner who she approached for a guard job laughed in her face, snapping his fingers for his current guards to remove her. When she turned on the two hulking men-- both mediocrely trained in firebending-- and easily bested them both, the owner reconsidered. So, standing about shoulder height to most of the sketchy, sleazy patrons of the gambling room, Azula earned a steady paycheck. Apparently, sitting in the back of hte tea parlor near the secret entrance to the backroom, Azula was an unassuming guard despite the glare she kept trained on all of the upright patrons of the front business. Colonial guards, who were supposed to uphold the anti-vice laws of the colonies, barely gave the tea parlor a second glance after not seeing a single ‘bouncer.’ 

Regulars learned quickly not to cross Azula. No one knew her name, but they all knew ‘the girl’ who would blast off your eyebrow for so much as thinking of breaking house rules, the girl who crossed her arms and cowed the biggest of men. 

The colony was a wretched place, but she had found a niche, and she’d gotten one of the co-owners of the tea parlor to rent her a room above it, and she was starting to feel that she may be able to bide her time here for a while. 

That feeling dissipated when she went to the market one day and caught a glimpse of imperial guard armor. She darted into an alleyway and waited for the guard procession to pass. There was no reason to believe guards from the mainland-- that looked to be deployed from Caldera City itself-- were here for her. There were hundreds of thousands of people in the Fire Nation, so there were hundreds of reasonable explanations for their venture from the mainland. 

Even so, she pulled up her hood and finished her grocery shopping in a hurry. 

Her fears were confirmed when, on her walk home, she came across what had been a relatively empty wall the day before. Now, beside posters of traitors and criminals, Azula’s face was plastered top to bottom. She lingered for a moment to read them: “Have you seen Princess Azula?” they read, the fine text waxing poetic about political enemies of Our Fire Lord plotting against the nation and kidnapping his beloved daughter.

Suddenly, the colonies were much too cramped. With a knot in her stomach, she realized she was going to have to leave Fire Nation soil far behind her. 

\--

She left immediately, without sparing a farewell to her employer or landlady. She found a carriage near the town square that was heading to an Earth Kingdom village for trade, slipped the driver two gold pieces, and hunkered down in the back with a handful of others seeking to leave the colony. Azula had heard whispers of this elicit practice-- a traveller paying off the driver, who kicks a portion back to the guards who are supposed to check the proper documentation of every person going in and out of the fortress walls. When she managed to get through this and into her rightful position in the Palace, she would have these lowlives punished for taking such a lax approach to the security of the colonies. For now, she pulled her cloak tighter to herself and hoped no one looked too hard at her face. 

The ride was several arduous hours, and by the time the driver allowed them out of the storage to stretch their legs and purchase goods at a trade post several miles from the colony’s wall. One of the other travellers, a girl a few years older than Azula but definitely still a teenager, followed Azula to the market stall. Azula kept her eye on her as she bought a bowl of rice. The girl quickly bought a bowl of rice as well and followed Azula where she went to the treeline to eat in the shade. 

Azula would not encourage this, but not knowing how long was left in their journey she would not shun it either. She did not want to cause a scene, but she did not want this girl getting ideas if she possibly knew who Azula really was. She pulled at her hood self consciously. 

“You’re Fire Nation too, aren’t you?” the girl said suddenly. Azula nearly dropped her bowl, fingers numb in shock. The girl sat beside her.

“My Father is Fire Nation, too,” she said, quiet now that she was only a foot away from Azula. 

Her eyes were a light brown, like many of Azula’s friends back home, and her hair was an auburn brown. 

“Your Father?” Azula asked, schooling her tone into a light and dainty voice she’d learned to mimic from girls at school, and the traveller girl nodded. 

“My Mother is Earth Kingdom. I’m sorry, is yours the other way?” she asked, furrowing her brows in confusion.

Oh. She thought Azula was-- Azula’s mind raced at the prospect, instantly deciding that yes, that was a perfect new identity for her. “No, I’m sorry, I was confused. My Father... was a Fire Nation soldier,” Azula said, her carefully schooled tone dropping away to her usual flat voice. 

The girl nodded. “My Father is a colonist.” She sighed and looked back to her own rice. 

They sat in silence as they ate, and returned to the carriage together. Azula could not imagine what comradery the girl imagined they had now, but she could sense it in the air between them. 

\--

Azula found this cover story useful when they were dropped in the next village. It was situated near a beach, and many of the people had some connections to the colonies that dotted the Earth Kingdom coast. There was some Fire Nation presence, but aside from lazy sentinels at the entrance of town, it was not very active. 

This village was too small for Azula to have much hope of finding any work other than manual labor, and she wasn’t ready to concede herself to that yet. She bought rations from one of two food vendors, and asked her how she could get to the next big village. 

The woman was old-- wrinkled loose skin sagging on her cheeks, green eyes looking at Azula with no evident thoughts behind them. She pointed a finger toward the water, and Azula followed the gesture to the lone pier, with several sail ships docked. 

Azula handed the woman the money owed and put the food into her bag, turning to investigate the docks, when the woman’s hand closed on her wrist. She immediately moved to rip her hand out of the woman’s grasp, but when she turned to yell at her, the woman had only a simple smile on her face. Her grip relaxed. 

“You should not look so troubled, girl,” she said, her hoarse and ancient voice cracking. “The Avatar is on Kyoshi Island. He has returned.” 

\--

Azula, having resigned herself to biding her time until she could plan how to strike at her Father, suddenly had a whole new option opened: the Avatar could do the job. In the vacuum of power left behind, Azula would return home and take her rightful place. 

She didn’t need to see this Avatar. She had heard plenty about Avatars of eras past, and she knew of their awesome power. 

So she couldn’t explain why she went to the docks and solicited sailors there for a lift to Kyoshi Island. In a stroke of luck, one of the sailors lived on the island and was eager to return when he heard the Avatar rumors. For a few bronze pieces, Azula bought her fare along with a handful of others, some of whom she recognized from the carriage ride, others completely new. The girl with the Fire Nation father was not among them.

This was probably the most pleasant leg of her travels yet. Since her departure from the palace, she had walked, been cramped in ferries and carriages, jostled by uneven roads and choppy, unforgiving water. But the sun shone down on the boat pleasantly, sea spray cooling her face.

The local sailor warned them when they were around two thirds of the way there. He said to keep quiet on deck, lest they bother the Unagi. Azula didn’t know what that was, but judging by the quiet that came over the boat, she didn’t want to find out. 

The island came nearer, and the ship aimed for a finger of the island that hid the southeastern quarter of the island. Slowly, slowly, more of the island became visible from the boat.

Azula was the first one to realize something was wrong. She smelled the fire-- hot, smoking, intimately familiar. She squinted, and spotted the dark billow of smoke against the bright sky. 

Slowly, Azula sensed the rest of the boat’s occupants picking up these same hints. 

Even so, they could not contain their shocked gasps when Kyoshi Village came into view: what must have been two dozen buildings the day before were largely reduced to smoking rubble. The fires must have burned cool, the thatch roofs burning up along with the exposed bamboo in the floors and insulation in the walls before leaving the structural components to fall on their own. 

There were people on the beach, and one of the other passengers stood and cupped his mouth to shout to them. 

Several thoughts crossed Azula’s mind simultaneously. The rumor of the Avatar’s return and spotting on Kyoshi Island had reached the Fire Nation. The Fire Nation had responded quickly and severely, as Azula would expect. Could they have captured him? And if not, would a Fire Nation general, assigned to capture such a high profile assignment, not destroy the village and then lie in wait for the Avatar to return? 

They were docking now, and the captain of the ship barely waited to tie one of the ropes down before hopping ashore and running to the crowd on the beach. Azula tracked him with her eyes as he rushed through the crowd, finding a woman and embracing her in relief. A wife, then. 

Azula slowly gathered her belongings, accepting a hand to help keep her steady as she stepped off the boat. Several of the other passengers were clearly not local, and she walked at the back of this group as they hesitantly made their way to the shore. 

“He was like a  _ ghost _ ,” Azula heard one woman say to the captain’s first mate, several feet away. 

“Who?” the first mate asked urgently. “Who did this?” 

“He wanted the Avatar,” another woman said, swallowing around a sob. Azula looked at her numbly, seeing her singed clothing, the skirt of her dress partially gone, the rest covered in soot. “We wouldn’t tell him where he had gone.” 

“He was like a demon,” another voice called out. “An evil spirit.” 

“Tell me what happened!” the captain demanded. 

Azula didn’t need to hear the story: she saw the scorch marks, the way that the buildings that stood closer to the shore were further reduced to ash and rubble compared to those further from the water. She saw warriors moving injured villagers in the shade of the trees up the hill, decked in green skirt and armor, faces painted white. One such warrior was approaching the crowd of newcomers. 

All eyes turned to her when she spoke. 

“The Winter Spirit,” she said, even and cool even as her voice shook. She revealed a thin slate of wood with a painting on it. In skillful detail, it depicted the demon that destroyed Kyoshi Village. "This is what the Kyoshi Warriors saw." 

It truly looked like a demon, like the woman said. The man wore a mask that covered three quarters of his face, its grotesquely carved mouth open to reveal a line of teeth and six fangs, jutting in every direction. Its nose was wrinkled in a snarl. The eye was round and empty, brow sloping downward severely. 

The left side of the mask was cut away, revealing an equally horrifying scar, the left ear all but a nub. Above the top of the mask stood a tight pony tail, the rest of his head shaved bald. 

Azula could not tear her eyes away from the painting, and for the first time since she left the palace, acid ate at her insides once again. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you [thewintermusketeer](https://thewintermusketeer.tumblr.com/) for reading this over for me! <3 
> 
> Rating and tags may change; please let me know if there is something I should tag for that I missed. 
> 
> This will be three parts, so please subscribe if you enjoyed this!
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